The new exhibit at the Boston MFA, Reality and Imagination, makes a startling claim: Rembrandt’s relationship to the Jews didn’t amount to much. The curators suggest that his “Old Testament” paintings do not indicate a special affinity for the Jewish people. Instead, they argue these works reflect an engagement with a “vast, undifferentiated realm” of minority communities in 17th-century Amsterdam -groups defined simply by their distance from Christianity.

Consider Rembrandt’s pillars: Jacob Wrestling the Angel, Belshazzar’s Feast, Moses Breaking the Tablets. These are not mere sociological gestures toward “minority life.” They are sustained, visceral engagements with the Hebrew Bible. For Rembrandt, the Jews are not an accidental or interchangeable minority. Their story – what Thomas Mann called the “Great Story” – is the........

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